Brisbane – Sydney – Abu Dhabi – Athens

Day 1 is mostly travel. In fact, it’s hard to define what, precisely, is a “day” when you cross so many time zones.

But ultimately we landed in Athens.

Sydney never looked so good

Abu Dhabi was when things started to look “foreign”

But flying over Turkey was spectacular!

In Athens at last

In Athens we stopped briefly at a couple of sites and began the information download.

The lifestyle is visibly different, partly because everyone seems to live in apartment blocks, but also because people move around these ancient monuments as part of their daily lives. This was to become something of a feature of the whole journey. Australians don’t have enormous monuments erected thousands of years earlier. The sense of “history” was more apparent in Athens than at home.

It forced me to reflect that, for Indigenous Australians, this sensation must be there in Australia, too. The “natural” landmarks in Australia can be identified with Dreaming stories in a way that connects their history with the contemporary people. Note to self: attempt to connect with that.

Connecting with People

We went for a bit of a walk from the hotel. I changed some money, and generally tried to get used to the idea of being in Athens. There were enormous amounts of graffiti everywhere, and the economic woes of the country were evident. The guide later explained that much of the graffiti is political.

Luca and I met an elderly lady by helping her across the street and we struck up a conversation in her broken English, and Luca’s minimal Greek. She was distressed and disillusioned. She was impoverished and in dire need of encouragement in the face of her whole country economically crumbling around her without any hope of relief in sight. We spoke about God’s providence for her, drawing on her already strong, presumably Greek Orthodox, faith background. We encouraged her in the certainty of God’s love for her and her whole country. We ended up praying for her on the street. She was convinced that I was a priest, and it was too difficult to explain otherwise.

She was concerned about a homeless man who had self-harmed, and whom she was trying to get to visit a doctor. I went with her to find him, just a few doors up the street. We found his bedroll but the man was not there. My friend was arguing with the proprietors of the property where the bedroll was located (a theatre), defending him and begging them not to chase him away. The lady in charge of the cinema was clearly not wanting to do anything heartless, but she was trying to run a theatre. I couldn’t understand their words, but the conversation was painfully transparent.

Eventually it became clear that the man was not returning soon, so I pulled out a One Euro coin, kissed it, and placed it in the man’s bedroll. The elderly lady instantly recognised this as a blessing, which was my intention, and she was moved to tears. I left her to continue pleading with the proprietor for a stay of execution on the homeless man, now armed with the authority of a “priestly” blessing over his case.

To me, the streets feel pregnant with the possibility for radical change. I reflected that if someone is not preaching a godly revival among the vast throngs of unemployed men, sooner or later someone will preach an ungodly one. One shudders to think. As for me, it sure would would be exciting to be preaching on the streets of Athens at the moment…

Engagement with the Text

This text became relevant later when we visited the Areopagus, but on day 1 I found no way to connect it with my experience.

I felt more connected to the experience of Jesus among the Israelites, preaching to them that the kingdom of God is come despite their awful poverty and affliction under the Roman yoke. I felt an urge to move around the streets gathering up the threads of faith that this community has built into its culture, as Jesus did, and preach a movement of radical hope, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness and transcendence, as Jesus did, manifesting the signs of God’s faithfulness to his people, as Jesus did.